


Let It Go

by Flowerparrish



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Clint Barton POV, Frozen AU, M/M, Steve is a Reindeer, the trolls are a weirdly big part of this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:07:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21994222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flowerparrish/pseuds/Flowerparrish
Summary: Clint’s halfway done scaling his way down the side of the palace wall by the time he bothers to wonder what the fuck he’s doing.AKAA Frozen au
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Comments: 31
Kudos: 157
Collections: Winterhawk Wonderland





	Let It Go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lissadiane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lissadiane/gifts).



> Hi Lissa! I hope you enjoy this gift! Thank you for giving me the perfect excuse to rewatch Frozen for the first time in years! This might be slightly less a Frozen au than an inspired by Frozen fic, but I hope you enjoy it anyway. <3 Happy holidays!
> 
> And thank you to the mods of the Winterhawk Wonderland exchange for running such a fun event!

Clint’s halfway done scaling his way down the side of the palace wall by the time he bothers to wonder what the fuck he’s doing.

It isn’t that he doesn’t have a plan. Well, kind of. Okay, he’s got about ten percent of a plan, and most of that consists of finding out if ice powers will keep him from freezing to death as he wanders around in the snowy wilderness looking for a remote place stay. He thinks they will. He’s relatively confident.

He doesn’t want to die. But he can’t risk staying—not when Barney’s about to become king.

He comes of age in two weeks’ time; the castle is already bustling with efforts to decorate and prepare for the massive coronation ball. Not that Clint’s seen any of that; he lives in his suite of rooms, as per his (now deceased) father’s orders. Food is left outside his door, along with anything he could ever want or need. It’s a half-life, but it keeps everyone else safe.

But now Clint’s parents are dead, and Barney’s about to become king, and the tentative balance of safety that was established when their parents locked Clint away and all but threw away the key is at risk.

Clint hasn’t spoken with Barney in years. But that doesn’t mean Barney hasn’t talked _at_ him, voice faint through the thick oak doors that could muffle the sound but not the fierceness of his brother’s promises. _One day,_ his brother had promised, _I’ll be king and you’ll be free._

There’s no way to tell Barney that Clint doesn’t _want_ to be free.

And it would be a lie if he did.

He wants to be free. He wants to be like everyone else.

But he almost killed his brother when they were children, and the cost of Barney’s life was all memory of the magic that thrums like a living thing underneath Clint’s skin, bursting free whenever he’s not strong enough to contain it.

It’s… better, this way.

At least, Clint hopes it is.

It has to be.

**

He doesn’t freeze to death.

That seems to be less a victory for his magic, and more a victory for the person who—apparently—dragged him out of the snow and into a warm cabin.

The first thing Clint notices when he wakes is that he can feel his limbs again— _nice—_ and that he doesn’t recognize his surroundings—less nice.

“You trying to get yourself killed?” a voice demands from somewhere to his right.

Clint winces as the sound makes his head pound. “No,” he croaks, his throat almost too dry for words.

A man appears in his line of sight, standing over Clint where he’s laying—where _is_ he laying? On the ground? On something soft, though, so he can’t be too worked up about it.

The man sits down on the floor beside him and holds out a glass of water. “Do you need help sitting up?”

Clint pushes himself up, and his vision swims a little but he manages. He reaches out to take the glass, but his hand is shaking too much for him to risk it. He closes his fingers into a fist and pulls his arm back to his side.

The guy doesn’t appears indifferent to this; he doesn’t look like he cares about Clint and his presence one way or the other. That’s refreshing—it means he won’t care when Clint leaves again, won’t try to stop him from going.

All the guy does is hold the glass up to Clint’s lips. He tilts it carefully and helps Clint drink a few sips of water before he pulls the cup away and sets it aside. “So, what were you doing out there, then?” he asks, apropos of nothing.

Clint struggles to find a good answer. When he can’t think of one—he’s out of practice coming up with excuses; he hasn’t had any reason to need one since he was a kid—he opts for the truth. Or, well, a version of it. “Running away.”

The guy tilts his head, like he’s curious. But he doesn’t ask. Instead, he says, “Where are you headed?”

“Anywhere,” Clint says, but that’s not quite right. “Anywhere I won’t be found.”

The guy nods slowly. “Okay. You can stay here until you’re back on your feet.”

“I can’t—” Clint starts to protest, panic bubbling under his skin at the thought of sharing space with another human. It’s less about the fact that this man is a stranger, and more about the fact that he could kill him without even trying.

The panic makes magic surge under his skin, and his fingers feel cold—a warning. At least, that’s how he’s come to think of it.

He doesn’t have much time to get himself under control, or even finish protesting, before the guy speaks again. “If you go out there like you are now, you’re going to undo all my effort at keeping you alive. I don’t like to waste my time.”

Clint opens his mouth to say something. But then he closes it, because, what could he say? The guy is right. Resigned, he asks, “What’s your name?”

The guy studies him for a moment. “Bucky,” he says after a moment. A fake name if Clint’s ever heard one. But it’ll do.

“Bucky,” Clint repeats. “Okay. Just for a couple of days.”

It isn’t until later that Clint realizes Bucky never asked for his name in return.

**

Clint gets bored of staying inside by the fire after the first day.

It would have been sooner, but he spent most of that day dozing.

He isn’t sure where this inability to stay still comes from. He was never this restless in his suite at the castle. But then, there was no point, was that? It wasn’t like he could leave.

It’s better when Bucky’s inside and Clint can watch him cook or clean or knit or do whatever other things Bucky does.

And yes, Clint is absolutely baffled that the guy who is all gruff indifference and muscles for days knits in his spare time. Baffled, yes, but also… charmed? At least fascinated.

He doesn’t remember people being this interesting before. But then, maybe it’s just because he hasn’t really had a chance to watch other people go about their lives in a long time.

Clint doesn’t get to watch Bucky too much, though; he’s often outside, and Clint’s left indoors to stare at the walls and feel like he’s going to go insane.

He starts moving around the second day, when he’s awake for long enough and his legs can support him again. There’s not much to see; bowls and spoons and canned food in the kitchen, a table and two chairs that look hand-carved, an animal pelt by the fire (so _that’s_ what Clint’s been laying on), a couch that’s tattered and lumpy and old with a knitted blanket thrown over the back. Not much else, at least in the main space.

Outside of one of the windows, Clint can see Bucky and what looks like a…moose? They’re standing in the snow out back, and it looks like Bucky’s arguing with the animal, which… what?

Clint tugs on his coat, which is hung up by the door, and his boots, which are on the floor under the front window, and trudges outside.

He can hear Bucky’s voice, but the wind whips away the words themselves. He’s definitely arguing with the moose, though.

Clint rounds the house and the noise cuts off. Bucky turns and glares at Clint—the first real sign that he feels anything about Clint’s presence one way or the other. It’s just Clint’s luck that it would be animosity.

“What are you doing?” Bucky demands.

The moose makes a noise—what are the noises of moose called? Clint doesn’t know, but then, his education suffered when he stopped receiving formal lessons and started to teach himself out of books instead—and Bucky turns his glare away from Clint and towards the animal instead.

“Uh, I was… bored,” Clint says, and he winces when he says it.

The guy throws up his hands and stalks away. The moose doesn’t follow. Instead, it approaches Clint. He stays carefully still as it approaches, unsure if he should… what, run? Hold out a hand for it to sniff?

Before he can decide, the moose has reached him, and it nuzzles against Clint’s chest before circling around him and nudging him forward. He stumbles but manages to catch himself, and then he asks, “Hey, what was that for?” before he remembers that the moose won’t understand and can’t respond.

The moose nudges him again, and Clint stumbles forward once more in the same direction Bucky went. “You want me to follow him?” he asks, because, yeah, okay, he’s gonna embrace this. He talks to moose. It’s a thing. The only person around to judge him is Bucky, anyway, and he talks to moose too, so it’s fine.

The moose makes another noise in response that Clint can’t interpret. He looks at it, and the moose’s eyes are startlingly intelligent when he meets their gaze. It doesn’t nudge him forward again, just holds his gaze and snorts softly.

“Okay then,” Clint decides aloud. “Why not.” He follows the path of Bucky’s footprints, the moose at his side, because he might as well.

It doesn’t take them long to catch up to Bucky. He hasn’t gone far; when they reach him, he’s just leaning against a tree, arms crossed, expression brooding.

The moose huffs and Clint chooses to interpret it as exasperation. “Why were you arguing with a moose?”

The moose huffs again and Bucky rolls his eyes. “That’s Steve. He’s not a moose, he’s a reindeer. Also, a pain in the ass.”

Clint glances over at the moose—fuck, reindeer—and tries to see if it’s—he’s—offended, before he remembers that moose—fuck, _reindeer—_ don’t speak or understand spoken language, and so there’s no reason for him to be offended anyway.

But then the reindeer _rolls his eyes._

“What the—can he understand us?”

Bucky just nods. “Yep.”

“But—” But what? It’s impossible, but then so are Clint’s ice powers, so maybe what’s possible isn’t necessarily relevant. “How?”

Bucky shrugs. “I dunno if he’s always been like that or if…” he trails off, and after a moment he shrugs. “I dunno.”

Steve nudges Clint toward Bucky again, even though they’re only a few yards apart, and Clint stumbles in the snow. “Hey! Watch it!”

“Leave him alone,” Bucky says, and Clint’s about to protest that Steve started it when he looks up and sees that Bucky’s looking at Steve, not Clint.

Steve huffs, a distinctly displeased sound if Clint’s ever heard one, and Bucky just says, “No,” as if they’re in the middle of a conversation or something.

He’s possibly the weirdest person Clint’s ever met.

Clint hasn’t met a lot of people, no, but he’s confident that even if he _had_ met a lot of people, Bucky would still be one of the strangest.

“What does he want?” Clint asks.

Bucky sighs. “For me to find out what kind of trouble you’re in.”

That’s… sensible. “How do you know? Do you speak… reindeer, or whatever?”

Bucky shrugs. “I just do.”

“Oh.”

They stand there in silence, Steve shifting on his hooves but otherwise as quiet as they are.

Finally, Clint caves. “So, are you gonna ask?”

And Bucky says, “No,” like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

Steve huffs, and Clint thinks, _me too, buddy._ “But—aren’t you curious?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Bucky tells him firmly. “It’s none of my business. No one’s followed you yet, and I doubt anyone can track you after the storm that hit after I found you.”

Clint feels strangely disappointed. He shoves that away, because, the fuck? He should be relieved. It’s better if no one knows who Clint is. “Thanks.”

Bucky shrugs like it’s nothing when it’s so much more than that—to Clint, at least. Maybe it’s really that easy for Bucky.

Steve huffs and ambles back toward the cabin. “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine. He’ll get over it.”

“O-kay,” Clint agrees, drawing out the syllables in the word.

He opens his mouth to say something else—he doesn’t know what, but he’s sure his brain will come up with something—when he shivers, and Bucky speaks before he can. “You should get back inside.”

“But I’m bored.”

Bucky closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “I’ll be in soon,” he says. “I just need to get more wood in case it snows more tonight.”

“Fine,” Clint agrees, because he really _is_ cold and he’s way too weak to offer to help by carrying things.

Clint thinks he hears a huff behind him when he turns back toward the cabin, a sound quieter but still reminiscent of Steve’s. But he doesn’t look back.

**

That night, Clint has a nightmare. He doesn’t remember what it’s about; he starts awake, heart beating rapidly in his chest, when a hand roughly shakes his shoulder. He can feel the magic thrumming under his skin and it’s so much stronger than usual, fighting to break free from his control.

Clint opens his eyes, and he sees ice everywhere: on the walls, the floor, part of the ceiling. The fire’s been snuffed out, but the moonlight coming in from the windows glints off of every surface it touches. Clint can see his breath in the air, even if he can’t actually _feel_ the cold.

“Fuck,” he says, and hot tears prick at the corners of his eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

The tight grip on his shoulder eases. “What do you need?” Bucky’s voice is like a life-line, rough with sleep but not anger.

Clint draws his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them. He hides his face in his knees and cries.

He cries because he’s scared, and he’s sorry, but more than that, he cries because he’s not alone. He can’t count the number of times he’s woken up from nightmares to a frozen room and cried himself back to sleep, or worse, huddled under a frozen blanket until the heat from the magic ebbed and the cold sunk into his bones.

Even when he was a child, his parents were always angry when he lost control of his powers.

Clint can’t think of the last time he lost control and someone asked him what _he_ needed. It was probably Barney, but even then, Clint’s older brother always just did what he thought he should. It wouldn’t have occurred to him to ask.

This is kindness, and Clint doesn’t know what to do with it.

After a bit, a blanket is tucked around his shoulders, and it’s cold but his body heat quickly warms the fabric.

By the time he’s done crying, he’s weak and exhausted and he can’t stop shaking. He lifts his head anyway, and Bucky’s sitting on the floor across from him like the ice he’s sitting on isn’t cold and painfully hard. “Can you make the ice go away?” Bucky asks.

Clint shakes his head. “No, I don’t—” He doesn’t know what to say. “I don’t know how.”

“Okay. What can you do?”

Clint thinks back to when he used his powers as a small child. “I can make it snow. I can… cover things in ice. The things I touch get icy when I lose control of my emotions, sometimes. I don’t really know what else.”

There’s something dark in Bucky’s eyes. Clint doesn’t know what it is; Bucky’s inscrutable at the best of times, and Clint doesn’t have much practice in reading expressions.

“Why don’t you use your magic?”

Clint bites his lip. “It’s dangerous. It can… hurt people. Even when I don’t want it to.”

Bucky’s expression darkens further. “What are you running from?”

“I thought you weren’t going to ask.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Clint laughs. It’s a joyless noise. “Everyone. I’m running away from everyone I could hurt.”

“That’s not how magic works.”

“What would you know?”

Bucky sighs. “A lot. What do you know about trolls?”

**

So it turns out that Bucky—and Steve—grew up in a community of magic trolls. Bucky isn’t a troll— _yes_ , Clint asks—and he doesn’t have magic. He doesn’t tell Clint why he ended up there, and Clint bites his tongue to hold back the question.

“You have to use your magic to learn control,” Bucky says. “If you don’t use it, it just builds up and gets stronger. That’s why it breaks free so much.”

“But it’s _dangerous,”_ Clint insists.

Bucky is unmoved. “It’s more dangerous when it’s out of your control.” He pushes himself to his feet and winces as he stretches. Then he holds out a hand to Clint. “C’mon.”

Clint eyes his hand warily. “Where?”

“My family. They’ll teach you what you need to know.”

Clint doesn’t want to learn to use his powers.

Clint also doesn’t have anything to lose.

And more than both of those things, he realizes, is one underlying surety that’s keeping him calm.

He trusts Bucky. The guy who barely talks unless he’s arguing with a reindeer, who rescued Clint from a snowstorm and didn’t ask for anything in return, who wasn’t going to ask what kind of trouble Clint was running from until he needed to know.

So Clint reaches up and lets Bucky pull him to his feet. “Okay.”

Bucky pulls on his coat and boots and heads out into the dark.

Clint follows.

**

Clint doesn’t realize until they’re almost there—wherever _there_ is—that he’s been here before.

His memories of the time that their parents took Barney to be magically healed, and hid away Clint’s abilities in the process, are vague. But he remembers feeling the same fear as he passed this same scenery.

This settles his nerves somewhat. These are the same creatures, then, who helped his parents understand how dangerous he was. They’ll tell Bucky and Steve, and then they’ll have no choice but to turn Clint away.

He’s so sure of it, in fact, that he’s confused when it doesn’t happen.

The trolls make such a big deal about Bucky and Steve that they almost don’t notice Clint at all. When they do, they’re all talking over one another to ask who he is and when they met and is Bucky bringing his boyfriend to meet the family?

Bucky crosses his arms and glowers, but his cheeks are distinctly pink. Clint… doesn’t know what to do with all of this. Steve, for his part, one hundred percent understands everything that’s going on around them, and he nudges Clint forward when it doesn’t look like Bucky is going to say anything more.

“Uh, hi? I’m Clint,” Clint says awkwardly. He purposely leaves out his title, but he doesn’t know if it will do him much good. Once they find out about the magic, it’ll probably be kind of obvious.

Bucky sighs and uncrosses his arms. “He has magic that he doesn’t know how to control. He needs help learning to use it safely.”

That launches them into a whole new round of questions—although they seem to be the same questions with just a few new ones about magic mixed in.

Clint distantly wonders how someone so quiet and solitary came from such a lively bunch.

Finally, an elder steps forward and asks Clint to follow him. Clint glances at Bucky, but Bucky’s been ambushed by the children, so Clint does as asked.

The elder introduces himself as Pebble, and he speaks of Clint’s history—the magic, the accident with Barney, taking away Barney’s memories so he wouldn’t remember. He’s silent when he finishes recounting, and Clint doesn’t know what to say for a moment, before he realizes that the silence itself functions as a question. Only Clint knows what happened next.

So he tells his whole story, and he doesn’t realize until he’s finished that Bucky had come over at some point and is quietly listening. He meets Clint’s eyes when Clint glances over at him, but he doesn’t say anything.

Pebble, for his part, says little, but everything he says carries weight. He tells Clint more or less what Bucky had said; that he must practice his magic to learn to control it or else it will break free and overtake everything in its path.

“Why didn’t you tell my parents that when I was younger?” Clint asks. He’s too numb in the knowledge that everything he suffered was for nothing—made everything _worse—_ to be angry, but he thinks maybe the anger is there, under the surface, waiting to break free.

“I did.”

Clint feels like a puppet with cut strings, unmoored from everything he’s ever believed about himself, his magic, and his place in the world.

Pebble seems to understand, because he only says, “I will begin to teach you tomorrow,” before he turns and leaves.

It’s just Clint and Bucky then.

Clint doesn’t know what to do. But Bucky takes his hand and pulls him away into a hut where they can stay. It’s normal-sized—or rather, human-sized—although Clint doesn’t notice that until later.

For now, all he notices is that Bucky unlaces his boots and guides him to a cot, covers him with a blanket and then sits down on the cold floor next to the bed. “Get some sleep.”

Clint closes his eyes. His heartbeat eventually slows to match the pace of Bucky’s even breaths.

Eventually, he sleeps.

**

Clint loses track of the time they spend with the trolls. It doesn’t help that in the first few days, he’s either angry or numb, neither of which is very good for learning control. But slowly, steadily, as he uses his magic, he starts to gain confidence.

He starts to realize that it’s… _fun._ He likes it.

Even the trolls don’t know the limits of what he can do, which just makes every new discovery that much more enjoyable.

He makes the children giggle when he forms a perfect snowball and throws it the back of Bucky’s head one day, a few weeks in to their stay. Bucky glares at him, but there’s a small smile trying to tug free at the corners of his lips, and Clint—

Clint thinks, _oh,_ and he realizes what that pull between them is. He thinks he can be forgiven for not recognizing it earlier; after all, he’s never really had an opportunity to be attracted to anyone before.

But in that moment, all he can think about his how badly he wants to see Bucky _smile_ at him like he smiles with Steve or the children. And then maybe also how he’d like to kiss that smile and see what it felt like against his own lips.

He trips over his own feet and the children laugh, and the moment passes, and Clint resolves to ignore it, because even if he gets control of his magic, it’s not like he’s going to _stay_ with Bucky. Bucky has his life, and Clint is just an imposition. He’ll go back to his cabin, and Clint will…

Well, Clint will do something. He’ll figure it out when the time comes.

He does start to wonder why Bucky is still _here_ though.

They’re his family, yes, but as the weeks drag on, Clint wonders what could be keeping him tethered here.

He tries to ask Pebble at one point, but the old troll ignores him and redirects his focus to honing his magical abilities.

He asks one of the younger trolls and she laughs. “Don’t you know?” she asks Clint with a twinkle in dark eyes.

“No?”

She pats him on the arm. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out sooner or later,” she tells him, and then she won’t say a word more on the subject.

Clint _doesn’t_ ask Bucky why he’s still here. He’d surely get an answer, but he can’t shake the fear that if he asks, Bucky will remember that he doesn’t need to be here after all, and he’ll go.

Clint doesn’t want Bucky to go. But he doesn’t know how to make him stay.

**

The date of Barney’s coronation comes and goes.

Clint has trouble focusing his magic; he’s too distracted wondering if Barney’s okay, if he misses Clint, if they’ve even noticed Clint is missing. If anyone cares. If anyone’s looking.

“You cannot go back to that life,” Pebble tells Clint solemnly.

“I know,” Clint says. And he does. He knows now that his magic is a part of him that shouldn’t be hidden and won’t be contained. And he knows that Barney can’t remember his magic or he’ll die. But that doesn’t stop Clint from being sad about it.

Pebble seems to sense that his grief won’t be brushed aside in one day; that it needs to be felt before Clint can move beyond it. So he sends Clint away, and Clint, as always, finds Bucky.

Bucky takes one look at Clint and draws him aside. “Are you okay?”

Clint goes to nod, to say yes, and instead he bites his lip and says, “Not really.”

“Okay,” Bucky says, like it’s that easy. “What do you need?”

If Clint were to ever look back and try to pinpoint the moment he fell in love, this might be it.

Clint doesn’t mean to say what he says. It’s the first thing that comes to him—the _only_ thing that comes to him—and he says, “You.”

Bucky doesn’t pull away from Clint. He just studies him for a moment, and then he says, “Okay.”

Their first kiss isn’t perfect. Clint’s lip is swollen and cracked from the way he’s been biting it, and their noses bump against each other’s before they figure out how to angle their heads.

But it’s warm, and Clint can feel Bucky’s breath against his lips when they break apart, and it’s the closest he’s ever been to someone else.

It doesn’t take away the sadness Clint feels about the loss of the life he could have had. But it opens up a potential for a future Clint could never have dreamed of having.

Clint brushes their lips together once more, just to feel the press of warmth and softness that’s seeping through him, and Bucky’s lips curve into a smile against his.

It’s nothing like Clint imagined it would be.

Because it’s better.

“Stay with me?” Clint asks.

“As long as you’ll have me.”

“Always,” Clint promises.

And for the first time in years, where his magic surges under his skin, it doesn't scare him. It feels happy and alive. _He_ feels happy and alive. So he smiles, and he lets go of the life he expected to live, because for the first time in forever, he doesn't feel alone. 

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I absolutely paraphrased Anna's song for the ending. #noregrets
> 
> I hope you enjoyed!


End file.
